"A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom
freer," answered the raven.

"You have no right to make me do things against my will!"

"When you have a will, you will find that no one can."

"You wrong me in the very essence of my individuality!" I persisted.

"If you were an individual I could not, therefore now I do not. You
are but beginning to become an individual."

All about me was a pine-forest, in which my eyes were already
searching deep, in the hope of discovering an unaccountable glimmer,
and so finding my way home. But, alas! how could I any longer call
that house HOME, where every door, every window opened into OUT, and
even the garden I could not keep inside!

I suppose I looked discomfited.

"Perhaps it may comfort you," said the raven, "to be told that you
have not yet left your house, neither has your house left you. At
the same time it cannot contain you, or you inhabit it!"

"I do not understand you," I replied. "Where am I?"

"In the region of the seven dimensions," he answered, with a curious
noise in his throat, and a flutter of his tail. "You had better
follow me carefully now for a moment, lest you should hurt some
one!"